Notes From an Even Smaller Island


Book Description




Notes from a Small Island


Book Description

Before New York Times bestselling author Bill Bryson wrote The Road to Little Dribbling, he took this delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation of Great Britain, which has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie’s Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey.




Final Notes From A Great Island


Book Description




Notes from an Even Smaller Island: 20th Anniversary Limited Edition Print of a Singapore cult classic


Book Description

Knowing nothing of Singapore in the 1990s, a young Englishman, Neil Humphreys, arrives in the land of “air-conned” shopping centres and Lee Kuan Yew. From the aunties in the hawker centres to expats dressed as bananas, from Singlish to kiasuism, and from Singaporeans at home to Singaporeans abroad, Humphreys explores all aspects of Singaporean life, taking in the sights, dissecting the culture and illuminating each place and person with his perceptive and witty observations. Written by someone who is at once both insider and outsider, the book is a wonderfully funny and disarmingly honest portrait of Singapore and its people. That was the original synopsis. And a cult classic was born. First published in 2001, Notes from an Even Smaller Island became an extraordinary success, selling tens of thousands of copies. It popped up on the national bestseller several times over the years and launched Neil’s stellar writing career. This 20th anniversary edition contains new material; Neil has gone back and re-evaluated his first book, looking at what he got right, what he definitely got wrong and updating readers on key characters, stories and crazy incidents. He also includes never-previously published photos to prove – once and for all – that every word of his irreverent work was true.




Firefly Lane


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.




Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl


Book Description

What is this World? What kind of place is it? "The round kind. The spinning kind. The moist kind. The inhabited kind. The kind with flamingos (real and artificial). The kind where water in the sky turns into beautifully symmetrical crystal flakes sculpted by artists unable to stop themselves (in both design and quantity). The kind of place with tiny, powerfully jawed mites assigned to the carpets to eat my dead skin as it flakes off. The kind with people who kill and people who love and people who do both... "This world is beautiful but badly broken." "I love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn't stuck in one place. It is full of conflict and darkness like every good story, a world of surprises and questions to explore. And there's someone behind it; there are uncomfortable answers to the how's and whys and what's. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through Him were all things made... Welcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Let the pages flick your thumbs."




Complete Notes from Singapore


Book Description

An all-in-one collection of Neil Humphrey’s trilogy: Notes from an even Smaller Island, Scribbles from the Same Island and Final Notes from a Great Island. In 2003, his second book, Scribbles from the Same Island, a compilation of his popular humour columns in WEEKEND TODAY, was launched in Singapore and Malaysia and also became an immediate best-seller. In 2006, Final Notes from a Great Island: A Farewell Tour of Singapore completed the trilogy. The book went straight to No.1 and decided to stay there for a few months. Having run out of ways to squeeze ‘island’ into a book title, Humphreys moved to Geelong, Australia. He now writes for several magazines and newspapers in Singapore and Australia and spends his weekends happily looking for echidnas and platypuses. But he still really misses roti prata.




Small Island


Book Description

In this delicately wrought and profoundly moving novel, Andrea Levy handles the weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, with a lightness of touch and a generosity of spirit that challenges and uplifts the reader.




A Small Place


Book Description

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John "If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.




A Fan's Notes


Book Description

This fictional memoir, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, traces a self professed failure's nightmarish decent into the underside of American life and his resurrection to the wisdom that emerges from despair.